March 9, 2011- American Crossroads GPS, an advocacy group that reported spending about $17 million on advertising before the midterm elections, generated controversy by using its nonprofit status to shield donors' identities.

As it turns out, the Internal Revenue Service hasn't even approved the group's nonprofit status. Crossroads filed an application in September but the agency has not acted on it.

That's not a problem as far as the law is concerned - the tax code allows an organization to operate as a nonprofit before it receives such status. Many groups do not file the paperwork until it is time to send in their first tax return.

The issue is more than a matter of paperwork, however. Watchdog groups say that Crossroads and other groups active in campaigns are taking advantage of lax IRS enforcement to offer political donors anonymity.

Crossroads GPS was founded with backing from Karl Rove, a political adviser to President George W. Bush, and concentrated its spending to produce attacks on vulnerable Democrats last year. But the group was formed as a "social welfare" organization under the tax code, allowing it to avoid revealing donor names.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) discovered that Crossroads's application had not been approved.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio said that any new nonprofit would face the same IRS backlog and that "reading anything into it beyond a typical procedural issue is irresponsible."

Collegio added: "CREW focuses its complaints overwhelmingly against conservative groups - ignoring that Crossroads GPS complies fully with the same laws that govern 137,000 nonprofits, all of which can legally engage in advocacy."

Under the tax code, interest groups active in campaigns are allowed to form as nonprofits and keep donor rolls private as long as politics is not their "primary purpose," which typically means that no more than half of their budget is spent on election activity.